Loosening currency exchange rate controls, reducing dependence on China and privatizing state companies were some of the items on former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) prescription list to help the nation’s ailing economy, which he discussed in recent interviews with the media.
In interviews with the Chinese-language Journalist and Wealth magazines, published on Wednesday and yesterday respectively, Lee shared his views on the political and economic situation in Taiwan as well as his observations on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration.
The 89-year-old, an expert on agricultural economics, paid special attention to the economy and said Taiwan should keep the exchange rate of New Taiwan dollar against US dollar at about NT$33 or NT$34 to increase the competitiveness of Taiwan’s exports, rather than insisting on a rigid forex policy.
Social wealth is expected to increase after the stimulation of exports, he said, and the currency exchange rate could then return to current levels to stem inflation.
“The exchange rate, as well as policies, should be always flexible,” Lee said.
In general, Lee said he was gravely concerned with two elements of the economy — an overdependence on imported energy and the Chinese market.
On energy, Taiwan should be able to develop biomass energy by utilizing idle land and lands released by state-controlled Taiwan Sugar Corp to grow yam and sugar cane, which would also revive local agriculture, Lee said.
Taiwan should try to bring back its businesspeople in China since the second-largest economy in the world has been having troubles increasing its domestic consumption, but this could not be done without solving labor and wage issues, he said.
Turning to politics, Lee said that as a former president, he had been reluctant to criticize Ma, but Ma has not handled his policies on fuel and electricity price increases and the capital gains tax proposal well.
He ridiculed both Ma’s “one country, two areas (一國兩區)” proposal and the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) rhetoric on Taiwan independence at the same time.
Ma’s proposal is basically a lie because it could not be implemented and his citing of the “two areas” design in the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) as the basis for his argument was “a misinterpretation of the Constitution as well as a failure to distinguish the difference between the situation in the 1990s and today,” he said.
“Cross-strait relations have always been state-to-state relations: We are the Republic of China and they are the People’s Republic of China,” Lee said.
With the dynamics of global politics rapidly changing, the DPP’s call for Taiwanese independence is meaningless, he said, adding that the focus should be on the nation’s transformation from the past authoritarian regime into a full-fledged democracy.
Taiwanese can rest assured that the US would not abandon the nation, given that Taiwan’s strategic importance in geopolitics would only increase after US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy shift from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region, he said.
“And if you know that the Taiwan Relations Act is listed as a US domestic law, you would understand the delicacy of the US’ views on Taiwan,” he said.
Lee, the first directly elected president in the nation’s history, said he favored a parliamentary system and thought that there could still be a president who would be directly elected, but that person would only function as a titular head.
“The [parliamentary] system requires more debates and deliberation during the policy-formulation process, which would better represent the public’s voice,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater